A letter from John Worth to Lord Lisle, after Lady Salisbury’s arrest, contains a curious allusion to the old project of betrothing the Princess Mary to her kinsman.
“Pleaseth your Lordship so it is that there was a coat armour found in the Duchess of Salisbury’s coffer, and by the one side of the coat, there was the King’s grace his arms of England, that is the lions without the fleur de lys, and about the whole arms was made pansies for Pole, and marygolds for my Lady Mary. This was about the coat armour. And betwixt the marygold and the pansy was made a tree to rise in the midst, and on the tree a coat of purple hanging on a bough, in token of the coat of Christ, and on the other side of the coat all the Passion of Christ. Pole intended to have married my lady Mary, and betwixt them both should again arise the old doctrine of Christ. This was the intent that the coat was made, as it is openly known in the Parliament house, as Master Sir George Speke showed me. And this my lady Marquess, my lady Salisbury, Sir Adrian Forskew [Fortescue], Sir Thomas Dingley with divers others are attainted to die by act of Parliament.”[230]
Pole thus wrote of his mother’s arrest to Cardinal Contarini:—
“You have heard, I believe of my mother being condemned by public council to death, or rather to eternal life. Not only has he who condemned her, condemned to death a woman of seventy, than whom he has no nearer relation except his daughter, and of whom he used to say there was no holier woman in his kingdom, but at the same time, her grandson, son of my brother, a child, the remaining hope of our race. See how far this tyranny has gone, which began with priests, in whose order it only consumed the best, then [went on] to nobles, and there too destroyed the best. At length it has come to women and innocent children; for not only my mother is condemned, but the wife of that marquis [of Exeter] who was slain with my brother, whose goodness was famous and whose little son is to follow her. Comparing these things with what the Turk has done in the East, there is no doubt but that Christians can suffer worse under this western Turk.”[231]
In Cromwell’s Remembrances occurs this entry: “What the King will have done with the Lady of Salisbury”.[232] It was his pleasure that she should languish in prison for two years, before her grey head was brought to the scaffold, but her son, Lord Montague, had suffered no such delay. Together with Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter he had been arrested, the latter for no other crime than for saying, “Knaves rule about the King,” and that he trusted “to give them a buffet some day,” and together they were beheaded on Tower Hill. Courtenay’s young son Edward, mentioned in Pole’s letter, remained in the Tower, grew up there, and was liberated by Mary in person on her accession.
Chapuys describes Lady Salisbury’s execution in the Tower, in presence of the Lord Mayor and about 150 persons. He says that when informed of her sentence she found it very strange, not knowing her crime; but she walked to the space in front of the Tower where there was no scaffold, but only a small block, and there commended her soul to God. She desired those present to pray for the King, Queen, Prince and Princess. The ordinary executioner being absent, a “blundering garçonneau” performed the office, who hacked her head and shoulders to pieces.[233]
There is no trace in the public records of the immediate effect produced on Mary by these frightful occurrences, except that Chapuys reports to the Emperor that “the Princess has been very ill, and in some danger of her life, but thanks to God she is beginning to recover, and there is a hope that owing to the good diet prescribed by her physicians, and the great care her father, and her own servants take of her, she will soon recover completely”.
She knew by experience, how slight a remark would suffice to place her own head in jeopardy, and acutely as she would feel the awful fate of her best friends, especially that of one to whom she owed next to her mother all her early training in that “virtue and goodness” of which even her father was proud, she dared not give utterance to the least word of sorrow, or even show a mournful countenance lest she should excite his wrath. When the strain became too great, the nervous tension ended in a complete break-down that must have been a relief. When we consider that even thoughts, sympathies and friendships were interpreted high-treason by this “western Turk,” and that Mary’s mental attitude was well-known to him, her hair-breadth escapes partake of the marvellous. In spite of her yielding to his every demand, he knew full well that his daughter had never given an interior consent to his new laws, and that in the eyes of Europe, he was on account of those same laws an object of derision. The only way in which he could claim respect for himself and for them was by becoming a terror. There is no doubt that Mary was still of value to him in playing off one of his allies against another, but at any moment it might suit his policy better to behead her, than to pretend to dispose of her in marriage. Cromwell, it is true, seemed to be her friend, but in the past, he had been the origin of her troubles, and it was evident to all, that his friendship would be as chaff before the wind, if she stood between him and the attainment of his purpose. It has been more than once pointed out by biographers of Cromwell, that he was not unnecessarily cruel, that he never sent any to the block from private passion, that he took no delight in bloodshed for its own sake. Neither was he accessible to any feeling of generosity or pity. All the thews and sinews of his make were of iron; humanity he esteemed a weakness, and altogether beside his one absorbing study of the advancement of self, by ministering to the greed, vanity and caprice of his master. He at last came to understand Henry’s character better than his own, and could have foretold the doom that awaited him, if he had been able to estimate the extent of his own capacity to satisfy the tyrant.